Best Budget Color Laser Printer

A color laser printer is valuable for any business that deals with printing its own advertisements or focuses on graphic design and the arts. With more affordable (and quality) options on the market, businesses and home offices today can print their own brochures, flyers, and ads without using more expensive and inconvenient printing services.

Today’s laser computer printers deliver unparalleled speed, pristine text, and reliable paper handling. If that’s what you need, find the best printer one for your home or office with our shopping tips and a list of top-rated models, based on our compilation.

Our Top 3 Picks For Best Budget Color Laser Printer

HP Neverstop 1001nw

5,000 Pages Color Laser Printer

The first entry-level, cartridge-free mono laser, the HP Neverstop 1001nw prints for a fraction of the cost of its closest competitors, making it a terrific choice for producing up to a couple of thousand pages each month.

Neverstop laser printers deliver some of the lowest running costs in the business. That key fact, plus a good feature set and overall good print quality, make the 1001nw a terrific value for homes, small offices, and workgroups that need to print and copy 500 to 2,500 monochrome pages each month.

The printer doesn’t require big, bulky, and expensive toner cartridges so instead of buying and swapping out a cartridge each time the printer runs out of toner, you fill a bin inside the machine from a replacement kit. The process takes just a few seconds. The reservoir inside the printer holds 5,000 pages worth of toner.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Very low running costs
• Good text print quality
• Easy, no-mess toner refill kit

Cons

• No support for automatic two-sided (duplex) printing
• Below-average graphics output

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Brother HL-L9310CDW

Three 250-sheet Drawers Color Laser Printer

The Brother HL-L8360CDW, the HL-L9310CDW is a high-volume, single-function (print only) color laser printer designed for midsize offices and workgroups, as well as enterprise and fleet environments.

A fast color laser printer with low running costs, spectacular expandability, and excellent print quality, the Brother HL-L9310CDW is a first-class value for large and midsize offices and workgroups with high-volume printing requirements.

You can configure security, monitor consumables, print usage and other reports, and print from several popular cloud sites from the HL-L9310CDW’s 2.7-inch color touch screen, or from the printer’s onboard web portal, accessible from most browsers including your smartphone’s or tablet’s.

Out of the box, the Brother HL-L9310CDW is ready to hold up to 300 sheets of paper, split between a 250-sheet main drawer and a 50-sheet override or multipurpose tray.

If that’s not enough or your needs change, you can add up to three 250-sheet drawers, two 500-sheet cassettes, or a stand and stabilizer that comes with four 520-sheet drawers, for a maximum capacity of 2,380 sheets. Also available are a combination cabinet/printer stand and a card reader.

When it comes to printing complex, full-color documents, the HL-L9310CDW excels. It also shines when printing high-quality color business graphics, such as Excel charts and graphs with dark or gradient backgrounds and small details such as hairlines. Documents or standalone snapshots and 8 by 10 glossies, came out looking good, too, with bright, brilliant, accurate colors and respectable detail.

Color laser printers aren’t cheap to operate. Using Brother’s list price and page yields for its largest (9,000-print) toner cartridges, cost per page (CPP) of 1.2 cents for monochrome and 7.5 cents for color pages, which isn’t bad. If you shop around or buy the four cartridges in sets, you can lower those costs by a bit.

While you can find high-volume color laser printers with enterprise and fleet security features for less, the Brother HL-L9310CDW comes with all the necessary convenience and productivity features, respectable speed, and output, and competitive running costs, not to mention excellent expansion options. I can’t think of a reason not to choose the HL-L9310CDW as a high-volume color printing workhorse for a wide selection of offices, workgroup, and other enterprise environments.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• High-yield toner cartridges.
• Highly expandable paper capacity.
• Ample standard and mobile connectivity.

Cons

• Somewhat pricey.
• The color touch screen is a bit small.

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Lexmark MC2535adwe

All in one Color Laser Printer

The Lexmark MC2535adwe is a fast color laser all-in-one printer that offers many valuable productivity and security features that small and midsize offices will love.

Lexmark MC2535adwe is a color laser all-in-one printer designed for medium- to high-volume use in small- to midsize offices and workgroups. It’s fast and comes with a robust feature set and expansion options. Furthermore, it has a high monthly duty cycle, it prints well, and it offers business-friendly security options.

The embedded web server (a common feature among business-oriented printers and AIOs), also provides extensive configuration and monitoring options, including the status of consumables and every other aspect of the printer you can think of.

The Lexmark MC2535adwe comes with a 50-sheet reverse-duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning, copying, and faxing two-sided multipage documents without your having to flip them manually.

Some of the MC2535adwe’s expansion options include increasing RAM from 2GB to 6GB for faster graphics and complex page rendering, and an internal hard drive for expanding storage capacity.

The default PDL is PostScript. Any of these languages are well-suited for graphic design and desktop publishing environments, making the MC2535adwe an excellent prepress proofing printer. This is especially true, given its excellent print quality. The MC2535adwe is also calibrated to utilize the Pantone matching system to provide spot color accuracy.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Excellent print quality.
• High maximum and recommended volume ratings.
• Highly expandable.

Cons

• Somewhat expensive to use.
• No Wi-Fi Direct or NFC.

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Conclusion

The first entry-level, cartridge-free mono laser, the HP Neverstop 1001nw prints for a fraction of the cost of its closest competitors, making it a terrific choice for producing up to a couple of thousand pages each month.

A fast color laser printer with low running costs, spectacular expandability, and excellent print quality, the Brother HL-L9310CDW is a first-class value for large and midsize offices and workgroups with high-volume printing requirements.

The Lexmark MC2535adwe is a fast color laser all-in-one printer that offers many valuable productivity and security features that small and midsize offices will love. For more options, visit Amazon.